The development of films or coatings as protective films for display devices such as a CRT screen is well documented in the art. These include antireflective coatings, hardcoats, optical coatings, and the like. Nevertheless, there continues to be a need for further improvement in the development of polymerizable high index materials for optical applications. Exemplary applications include antireflective coatings and hardcoat materials. Many polymerizable films have a refractive index of 1.5 or less. Because of the optical advantages, however, an increase of the refractive index to 1.6 or more would be a desirable improvement, in the development of the very thin coatings (about 85 nm) required for high optical layers for in anti-reflection applications. Furthermore, there is a need for durable, inexpensive, and yet high quality antireflective coatings that exhibit a relatively low reflectance, that is less than 1%.
Another concern is that after application to a useful substrate, many formulations that consist of a mixture of resins, monomers, oligomers, and photoinitiators dewet (or bead up) when the mixture solution is dried of solvent, prior to the UV curing step. As a result, there are portions of the substrate that are not covered with the requisite thickness of the high index layer and other portions that are thicker than desired.